


Time turned pages

by reefofhappiness



Series: These last few connections [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reefofhappiness/pseuds/reefofhappiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are far from perfect, but they'll work on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time turned pages

**Author's Note:**

> I feel the need to point out that, while there is “male pregnancy” as a plot point, it is only briefly "male pregnancy", which should be obvious by their plan to handle the issue. (That sentence probably reads as “in which reef refuses to be labeled by the man!” or something like that, for which I am sorry.)
> 
> The helipad was envisioned to be near Dulles Airport, as it handles international flight traffic, though it might not have been opened until November of 1962? There are also some allusions to pro-life sentiments -- partially because it is the sixties, but mainly because Charles is an idealist.

_“Give me one good reason why I should stop.”_

 _“I’m pregnant.”_

***

For Charles, the rest of the beach incident is a bit of a blur. Erik lets the missiles drop, and the ones that don’t blow up mid air sink into the depths of the ocean and, presumably, blow up there. He turns to Charles, and where there was once shock is now lividness.

“Are you serious?” He grits out. Charles wants to laugh, just a little, at how even now with Erik it’s that he first believes and then realizes to question. “How is that even – ”

“I’d rather,” Charles says, pleasantly, calmly, seriously. “That we all take cover before anything else goes wrong on this beach today.”

And Charles can hear Erik’s astonishment, his quiet displeasure, and he can hear Raven and rest of the team’s bewilderment, that Sean is thinking wildly that Charles is just making up something that’ll stop Erik, that Hank is panicking and already beating himself up because _he knows_ and this is not the first time an injection he thought would do one thing has betrayed him and gone up and above and beyond expectations to do another.

 _You are not a ‘fuck-up’, Hank_ , Charles thinks at him as they scamper into the cover of the trees – Azazel has already teleported away with Riptide and Angel, the instant Erik gave up the upper hand. Charles has a feeling this is not the last time they’ve seen them, though. They are powerful and too wrapped up in this as well to be gone forever into quiet hiding. It’ll all depend on who reaches them first though – Charles and those aligned with him, the government, or some other Shaw-like power figure – how precisely they’ll break out of the silence.

Right now Charles has other concerns, though. Like making sure his team is safe, making sure his team finds shelter and a ride out of Cuba, and soothing Hank’s anxiety projected straight at him so hard and heavy that Charles can feel his stomach rolling with the panic. _Really Hank, it’ll be fine_.

Erik runs side by side with him, quiet, completely quiet still with that helmet on, and above all else that’s what worries him.

(I am happy, Erik will whisper to him later in the evening, once they stumble upon a small Cuban town and everything’s not so scrambled and confusing and what’s supposed to be the right thing to say is a little more obvious. We can figure this out, he will say and Charles will set aside his anger for a night to fall in love again.)

***

Charles still hasn’t offered an explanation to anyone yet, as Moira calls in big under the table favors and gets them a helicopter to a private helipad in northern Virginia in the morning, and this is mainly because he doesn’t have one yet. He has ideas, sure, but he and Hank need to talk first to run theories by each other, clear things up and get a proper explanation ready.

Erik responds to the uncertainty by a sudden influx of protectiveness. At the nearby car rental they walk to, Charles finds himself constantly under Erik’s eye, under his suddenly vaguely suffocating presence. Erik comes out of practically nowhere to stand in front of him just so, making sure he doesn’t get bumped too much by the other people in line, which consists only of a three person family who are well in front of them at the desk. There’s plenty of distance between them, and yet Erik stiffens when the father thanks the receptionist and begins to escort his family in Charles’s general direction.

“Erik _really_ ,” he hisses under his breath when Erik eyes the couple and their son so nastily that they hasten to give the two of them a wide berth. “Not necessary.”

“I’m sorry,” Erik grits out. “Once you start telling me what’s going on, I might be more inclined to take your word on what is and isn’t necessary.”

That is like a punch to the gut and Charles feels a stirring of undiluted rage flow hot then cold through his veins. _Oh no_ , Charles thinks at Erik harshly, suddenly a twisted pleasure that he’s finally taken off that stupid helmet for good coursing through all of Charles. He pushes Erik away and squares off against him, _Just yesterday you were willing to wage war against all humanity and I, ready to kill thousands of men in the process. Don’t go trying to guilt ME._

Out of the corner of his eye, Charles can see the others waiting outside, and Hank and Moira and Raven are the first to notice the rigid stance both he and Erik are taking and the grim lines of their mouths, he can tell by how they shift nervously and hone their focus in on the two of them. Charles can feel their minds flicker with worry at them, and can feel how Erik’s pulses with a mixture of fury, of regret, and of desperation. Good, Charles thinks, _squirm_.

“Now is not the time, Charles.”

“So when? When I have to – to be in some other way physically incapacitated to prevent you from again attempting mass murder?”

Erik’s shoulders, already so defined, are taking that set that makes them look broader, angrier. “ _No_ , I chose not to go through with it in the end, didn’t I?”

Charles will not back down, no matter how it pains him to attack Erik like this. Because even if it hurts Erik for Charles to distrust him for even a moment, it hurts Charles more that he has moments upon moments that prove reason for him to have to distrust Erik after all. _I had to let it slip that I’m carrying your child. Shout it to the heavens, practically_. He thinks angrily. There is a belated, hissed whisper of _narcissist_ that echoes between them after a moment.

Erik stops looking so angry, so distant and unruly untouchable; it all melts into a look pleading for understanding. “Charles, you know I agree that this deserves more from us than carelessness,” his voice is a whisper, so quiet that the man behind the counter who is trying to appear as though he isn’t eavesdropping visibly strains to hear before having to give up when Erik thinks the rest at him. _I chose you in the end, that’s what it all means. I chose you over human and mutantkind, I chose you over what I believe is the future for our way of life. I am bitter over the loss, but we will find another way. Together, perhaps?_

Charles does not instantly forgive, but he is no longer ready to rip Erik’s throat out for being so incredibly _stupid_ about _everything_. He shrugs and looks away, hyperaware now of the entire group outside peering in to see what they are doing, of the man at the counter attempting to clear his throat in a way that is both attention grabbing and yet natural sounding.

“Fine, yes. Go rent the car, everyone’s waiting.” His words are reluctant, and yet his heart soars for a split-second. He wants so hard to be angry at Erik – which he is, deeply and truly – but he also wants just as hard to wipe the emotion away and forgive Erik’s latest transgressions as quickly as they happened because, in the light of how things went, there is always a worse outcome that Charles can imagine.

***

Erik sits patiently in the corner while Hank does scans, asks Charles questions of symptoms, as they untangle this mess.

“I hope you haven’t assumed the Professor has a second mutation that allows for male pregnancy,” Hank calls over his shoulder to Erik, who makes no indication of acknowledgement. “If that were the case, this would be a whole lot simpler.”

Charles feels agitation ooze off Erik like a second skin, but not the light, casual kind that Charles can playfully poke fun at. It’s the kind that might morph into anything ranging from disgust to rage, and he warns Hank of this situation with a quick hand to Hank’s furry wrist and a slight shake of his head.

Hank sighs and, if Charles isn’t mistaken, his nose twitches a little in Erik’s direction. “It’s actually quite amazing,” he says with a clinical awe that ticks Erik’s agitation a notch closer to shouting and waving metal around threateningly. “How were you so sure that you were with child before now? Surely you haven’t had the standard signs of pregnancy?”

Charles isn’t sure how Hank means for him to feel about that line of questioning, but the glimpse of his own emotions he gets before he compartmentalizes them beneath the more objective, scientific part of him is a little bit offended and mortified, all at once. “It’s – as a telepath, I started to sense this, this _fuzziness_ of a brain’s presence. I’ve noticed it before around pregnant women: it’s the fetus projecting. Not of conscious thoughts or emotions, just the faint state of being. So I recognized what kind of projections it was and tried to pinpoint it – I actually thought Raven was – and then Moira – ” He cuts off into a chuckle that is humorless, then shrugs and continues. “But in the end I realized it was coming from inside me. I hadn’t really had a chance to wrap my mind around it and think it through yet or figure out what it all meant before I had to declare it to the team.”

Erik’s hand shoots up in the air, a bit mockingly like he’s pretending to be a schoolboy. While Hank steadfastly ignores him like he’s not serious underneath the derision, Charles has always had more of a sense of humor than him, and so he nods graciously at Erik. “Yes?”

“You still haven’t explained how this happened.” Erik points out, voice overreaching for pleasant and instead arriving at unnaturally calm. Charles smiles wanly, because while it’s true that they haven’t gotten to that part yet, it also means that Erik’s anger will probably reach new levels by the time this conversation ends.

“Ah, right,” Charles says gaily, like he doesn’t already know that Erik will call him an idiot and fuss over it all. “Hank and I were experimenting with Cerebro.”

Immediately Erik’s eyebrows furrow, because they all know how he feels about the machine that, as he puts it, uses Charles as a lab rat. Hank cuts in, trying to make an already wrong thing right (but it’s simply too late to avoid them fighting, because Charles is seriously not okay with Erik right now, though he so badly wants to be). “We had hypothesized a way to strengthen the telepathic reach and power of it, by – by, uh, injecting – you have seen that there’s a special fluid that runs through the wires and piping of Cerebro, right?”

Erik doesn’t answer, too busy glaring at Hank to form words in the positive or negative, and all the metal in the room gives a frightful, singular shudder in unison that makes a terrible sound. Charles thinks it best that he finishes up the story. “The basics of what we did was take the fluid, put it in a biocompatible casing, put _that_ in a shot, then inserted it by needle into my larger intestines where the casing expanded to the proper size and attached to the walls of my intestines.”

 _What_ Erik hiss-thinks immediately, his aura a cacophony of cursing and rage and violent worry. “It was temporary thing,” Hank jumps in to explain, because that aura is so choking that Charles is sure telepathy isn’t required to sense it. “And we took precautions – that’s why we put it in his intestines, so after some time the casing would detach and be expelled on its own.”

Erik has leapt to his feet now, and Charles has to hold himself back from doing something desperate, like begging Erik to calm down and listen. “I’m terribly sorry,” Erik hisses. “But I still don’t understand.”

“I tagged the fluid with Charles’s DNA as a failsafe,” Hank explains, frantic now and Charles can hear him thinking that it’ll be his fault if the two of them go their separate ways after all. “In case the casing leaked or ruptured. Since…well, the fluid isn’t very human-friendly, so if it entered his body, the DNA tags would prolong his body’s immediate reaction of violently rejecting it and start some telltale symptoms to give me time to rush an emergency surgery.”

Erik’s eyebrow is twitching and the metal is shaking again. “So, let me guess. We had sex, and my sperm fertilized the sac of DNA fluid you thought would be ingenious to place in Charles’s stomach.”

Hank frowns. “It was his lower intestines,” he insists, as if this is the important thing here, and Charles is, strangely enough, proud of Hank for finding the courage. “I also didn’t know you guys were having s-sex.” His face flushes at the word and his eyes avert from them to the floor, but he still marches bravely forward and really, Hank has grown so much in such little time. “And even if I had known, I didn’t entirely realize this would be the result. But regardless of what’s in the past, the future is what’s problematic.”

Charles nods seriously, setting aside his sudden admiration for Hank and his need to handle Erik cautiously, because this is very much a problem. “Right, my concern has moved on to when everything starts growing larger. The intestines aren’t meant for that.”

Hank adjusts his glasses, his worried tic, and he starts shuffling through papers spread on his table. “I know, it’ll kill you if it doesn’t detach and pass on its own soon enough. Which, granted, it _might_ do.”

“But not only is that leaving it completely up to chance, I also don’t want to wait and see if it’ll die on its own accord. It’s a life now,” Charles replies, steadfast and determined and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, he won’t simply throw this life away without a fight. It’s saved him, so now it’s his turn. “We have to try something to save it.”

Hank is still avoiding their eyes with his next suggestion. “If you don’t want me to surgically remove it and dispose of it, then I don’t think the casing _won’t_ hold for an extended period of time.” There’s a wistful note in his voice at the prospect of taking the first course of action and disposing of the casing. It’s probably the safest route he could take, Charles admits, and Hank doesn’t want this mistake to be fatal.

He continues though, doesn’t push his will upon Charles. Instead, he walks Charles through precisely what plan B entails, mentally at first, for which Charles is glad. When these words are spoken, Erik will be in a whole new plane of anger, and Charles would like to be in a position of preempting control over the situation.

“There’s a chance,” Hank finally begins out loud, “that the casing might be able to withstand expansion long enough for the baby to, uh, mature enough to survive. The best bet right now would be to do surgery and move it from where it is to the subcutaneous fat outside the abdomen muscles. There’s some space to grow there, so that buys us time.”

“Buys us time?” Erik asks suspiciously, but catches on the instant the words leave his mouth, and he is immediately incredulous. “You think we should find a woman in that time to use as an incubator. My god, you simply love using everyone you can in your experiments, _herr doktor_.”

Hank pales, but Charles steps up for him. “It’ll be just like using a surrogate, Erik. We’ll explain the situation to her, the dangers, let her decide… It will either be by any woman’s free will, or we’ll find some other course of action. If you want this baby, I’m not seeing many other solutions.” He cocks his head, and his next words are low, even he knows it. “I thought you said we’d figure this out? That _this_ deserves more from us than carelessness?”

All the muscles in Erik’s jaw are taut. “Charles, that was before – I didn’t know all this. This is sounding impossible, and we’ve enough on our plate as is.” Erik switches from defensive to offensive, but Charles still catches the whiff of guilt underneath it all. “I still can’t believe you would willingly put yourself at so much unnecessary risk at such an ill-timed part of your life.”

There’s that word again, ‘necessary’. He wants to untangle the word from Erik’s mouth and let him know that Charles has the right to pick and choose what he thinks is and isn’t needed too. “It wasn’t intentional.”

“We were in the midst of a manhunt and a brewing war! That’s not a time to decide to meddle around with science by implanting things in your body.”

Charles’s eyes narrow. “And this isn’t the time to wish things different. We’re here now, we’ve got to keep moving.”

Erik’s pupils look like slits under the harsh lighting, and it only adds to how formidable he is, sitting there rigidly, angrily. Charles turns his attention away from him and back onto what he considers his first priority. “Hank, when’s the soonest we can do this surgery?”

Hank looks around at his lab, still trashed from his transformation, and then down at his now unwieldy hands. “I’d say two days to sterilize and prepare everything. And for me to practice my accuracy, as well as for you to get some rest, Professor.” He trails off into silence, then holds his paw-like hands out as though he’s admitting to something he’s guilty of. “Are you sure you want to trust me with this?”

Charles hears what he’s saying: Hank doesn’t have the best track record with things that are living. And based on that, Charles should probably not trust Hank with chemicals and biological procedures any more. But he figures by now it is either going to be a case of ‘third time’s the charm’, or ‘third strike and you’re out’, and _that_ is going to be determined by Hank and Hank’s own belief in his abilities. “Hank, if you trust yourself, I see no need to worry. I have faith in you.”

Charles sees the brief panic in Hank’s eyes, but then he’s thinking of Alex in the bunker, when Charles trusted Alex to not kill him and it worked out for the best. Hank is wondering if this will work out for the best too, and Hank’s clearly hoping it will. Good, because Charles really does believe he can do it.

“Of course, Professor. I’ll be ready in two days.”

***

Bedtime is frightful, if only because Charles is still torn. He is angry at Erik and he wants to let him know with more than barbed words and a cold shoulder. The only problem is that Erik’s angry back and, and Charles can get why. But he really wants Erik to see that he’s going to have to let it go and move on and live in the here and now, be angry about something that’s here and now.

(He also, deep down, has this fear that Erik isn’t here for nearly enough. He says he chose Charles over all he wanted, his life long pursuits and goals. Charles wants him to choose to be here for more than just one person; there are all the students, all the good they can accomplish this way, hopefully a child on the way, and _be the better man_ he hears, remembers, and for some reason this time it sounds traitorous to him.)

All this boils down to is Erik standing in only sleep pants outside the bed, staring down at Charles propped up on some pillows and staring back.

“Am I welcomed in?” Erik asks, voice steely and cold. Charles only quirks an eyebrow and decides to let Erik figure out what precisely that means.

It turns out he can’t, and so Erik sighs and sits on the edge of the bed heavily, staring down at his folded hands, forearms balanced on the bends of his knees. Charles is scaling the ridges of his spine, shadowed in the lowlight, with his eyes when Erik says, “Let’s talk.”

“About what?” Charles knows his voice is light. Knows Erik isn’t fooled by it.

“Well, let’s handle it like your dissertations and break it down one subject at a time. I’m angry at you. Want to know why?”

Charles sighs and sits up straighter among the pillows. “It’s funny that you assume I haven’t picked that up already from how strongly you’re projecting.”

“Charles.”

He lifts his hands in a show of surrender. “Right right, I’ll play along. Why?”

“You hid things from me. You’re ridiculously brilliant, and yet you endangered yourself in the stupidest project I’ve ever heard of – Cerebro is strong enough for our purposes – and then expect me to accept it all laying down. I’m sorry Charles, but _no_. I’ll feel better when this has all passed and you are safe from yours and Hank’s childishly selfish curiosity, but until then I reserve the right to want to bash both your heads in.”

There is a blossom of anger threatening to overtake his chest, and he has to beat down the impulse to make his argument in Erik’s head, loud and disorienting and mental warfare out of spite. That will not help, he tells himself. “So I’m angry at you as well. Would you like to know why?” His tone is ugly now, snappy and sharp.

Erik turns his head a fraction more towards Charles, in what is obvious embattled affection he doesn’t want to show. Charles grits his teeth and pushes forward. “You nearly didn’t come back.” _How could you be so selfish_ Charles lets resound in Erik’s head. “And I’m afraid you’ll change your mind and leave, which would absolutely devastate me. I know we’ll never see eye to eye, and a part of me is angry that you came back after all because I know you won’t be… _happy_ here. Because you don’t think we can make a difference my way.” _Because you find me weak_ he doesn’t mean to hiss at Erik, but does. He does not regret it, is just surprised that he’s managed to lose control like that.

Erik’s head whips around, his expression completely open and raw and there’s so much hurt in his eyes that Charles wants to project comfort to him, but he won’t let himself because –

Because this needs to be aired properly.

“Don’t think that,” Erik murmurs, voice low and intimate and urgent even though he doesn’t move from the edge of the bed. “I will find my happiness some other way by your side. You’re right that we won’t agree completely on methods,” the edge of his mouth twitches upward in a bitter smile. “But we will find a compromise somehow. I won’t leave you, any of you. Not the others, not you, not this baby… Just as I had to find another place within me to be more powerful with my ability, I will find yet another to be more powerful here with you and your pacifistic ways.”

 _Not weak_ , Erik corrects, slowly as he looks for the right words, _just so foreign I sometimes cannot understand_.

Charles surprises them both by being the first to move. He unswaddles himself from the blankets and crawls across the bed to Erik’s side, leaning heavily on him. “Right,” he whispers back, no longer so wrapped up in anger. _Things are so rarely so black and white to begin with_ , he sends gently to Erik.

Erik sends back a ray of hope, a promise of determination, and in some way they’ll make it. It won’t be easy, this won’t be the end of their fighting, their disagreements, and maybe it will crash and burn sometimes, but they’ll push forward and onward best they can.

“You do know,” Erik says sleepily later as they lay together in the dark, Erik’s arms draping over Charles’s hip lazily. “That you’ll have to talk to Raven later, hm? And the others too.” _But mostly Raven_ Erik doesn’t think quietly enough.

“I know,” Charles says, and a streak of shame runs through him because he should have known, should have let himself face and realize Raven’s pain and predicament so much sooner. Her support of Erik’s extreme ways have been bleeding off her so obviously, especially on the beach, that Charles can nearly breathe it in when she is near. And he’s hurt her and she’s confused now, but proud and defiant, walking around naked and blue. And he’s fine with it, he can teach himself to appreciate it as Erik appreciates it, learn ways to show he supports her, but first he has to talk to her and straighten it all out. “I will.”

And Charles does a mental sweep of the house, to check if everyone’s fine, and for tonight they are. Tomorrow will come and maybe they won’t be, but just tonight is all he can worry about right now.


End file.
